Prehistoric rodent may have set the stage for life in trees, herbivorous dietsthe 160 million-year-old fossil of an extinct rodent-like creature from China is helping to explain how multituberculates--the most evolutionarily successful and long-lived mammalian lineage in the fossil
and tree-dwelling mammals. Chong-Xi Yuan from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing China along with Chinese and American colleagues report their analysis of the fossil in the 16 august issue of Science.
Much like today's rodents they filled an extremely wide variety of niches--below the ground on the ground and in the trees--and this new fossil
Some could jump some could burrow others could climb trees and many more lived on the ground explained Zhe-Xi Luo a co-author of the Science report.
The tree-climbing multituberculates and the jumping multituberculates had the most interesting ankle bones capable of'hyper-back-rotation'of the hind feet.
Such highly mobile ankle joints are associated normally with the foot functions of animals that are exclusively tree-dwellers--those that navigate uneven surfaces.
Fast growing plants such as poplar eucalyptus or various grass residues such as corn stover and sugarcane bagasse do not compete
These new insights published this week online in Science Express can now be used to screen natural populations of energy crops such as poplar eucalyptus switchgrass or other grass species for a nonfunctional CSE gene.
They learned that the olinguito is mostly active at night is mainly a fruit eater rarely comes out of the trees
The large trees provide breeding cavities for the enormous bird which has a two-meter (six-foot) wingspan.
And when these dead massive trees topple into adjacent streams they disrupt water flow forcing the gushing river around over and under these new obstacles.
They found that large old trees and riparian old-growth forest were the primary distinguishing characteristics of both nest and foraging sites.
Scientists are aware of the differences between empirical and mechanistic models said Estes who was prompted by a similar comparison that showed an empirical-mechanistic divergence in tree-growth models.
Drought can not only cause immediate damage to trees; it can also make them less resistant to pests and fire.
Studying short-term spikes in the testosterone levels of Tsimane men UC Santa barbara anthropologists Ben Trumble and Michael Gurven have found that the act of chopping down trees--a physically demanding task that is critical
He and the research team collected saliva specimens from Tsimane men before and after an hour of tree chopping
It turns out the same is true for tree chopping. If you're better able to pull blood sugar into your muscle tissue
and better able to use that energy you'll be able to chop more trees Trumble explained.
If you lose the ability to have the acute spikes in testosterone that increase your ability to chop trees--chop longer
and other animals and plotted their genetic relationships in a phylogenetic tree. Corresponding author Ross Fitzgerald of the Roslin Institute and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland says strains of CC97 found in cows appear to be the ancestors of CC97 strains from humans.
Bovine strains seemed to occupy deeper parts of the phylogenetic tree--they were closer to the root than the human strains.
which instead live in habitats such as hollow trees and the roofs of old buildings. Last winter 11 out of 20 wild honey bee colonies known to be alive last September
and Geospace Sciences We can easily measure the greenhouse gas budget from a single smokestack but somewhat less well for a stand of trees.
Moving Dietary Management of Diabetes Forwardin a related commentary Holly Kramer M d. M p h. of Loyola University Chicago Maywood Ill. and Alex Chang M d. M
While our prehistoric relatives had no way to know the ash cloud was coming a recent study provides a new tool that may have predicted what path volcanic debris would take.
This paper provides a model for the pattern of the ash cloud if the wind is blowing past an eruption of a given size said Peter Baines a scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia who did the study.
Predicting Ash and Oil Flowsbaines thinks his work could be used to estimate how much ash is pouring out of a volcano
The scientists are hoping to use ash deposits from these volcanoes to develop a sharper picture of the amount
The research team developing the drug--led by scientists at the Nanomedicine Research center part of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical center--conducted the study in laboratory mice with implanted human
Researchers from the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai the Division of Surgical Oncology at UCLA and the Molecular biology Institute at UCLA also participated in the study.
and Cedars-Sinai chemists Eggehard Holler Phd professor in the Department of Neurosurgery and Hui Ding Phd assistant professor performed the technically difficult task of attaching it to the nanoplatform.
Cedars-Sinai's nanoconjugate is estimated to be about 27 nanometers wide. A human hair is 80000 to 100000 nanometers wide.
The above story is provided based on materials by Cedars-Sinai Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and quickly spread through the ponderosa pine canopies on the rolling hills near Colorado springs. The wildfire destroyed 500 homes in the first 48 hours
Landfire provides maps of the nation's land cover including vegetation type tree canopy cover and height.
The four species of birds considered in the study Effects of the emerald ash borer invasion on four species of birds included three woodpeckers that are known to forage on EAB-infested ash trees
and also stand to benefit from an increase in nesting habitat as trees are killed by EAB.
The emerald ash borer has been massively destructive because most North american ash trees have little or no defense against it Liebhold said.
We can take heart that native woodpecker species are clearly figuring out that EAB is edible
Both for forests and urban trees the emerald ash borer has been devastating said Michael T. Rains Director of the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station and Director of the Forest Products Laboratory.
and recover from EAB invasion with research on the insect ash trees'resistance to EAB and biological control.
These areas included sites approximately 50-100 km from the EAB epicenter where the insect had caused some tree mortality but considerably less than
#One trees architecture reveals secrets of a forestbehind the dazzling variety of shapes and forms found in trees hides a remarkably similar architecture based on fundamental shared principles UA ecologists have discovered.
Researchers in the University of Arizona's department of ecology and evolutionary biology have found that
despite differences in appearance trees across species share remarkably similar architecture and can tell scientists a lot about an entire forest.
Just by looking at a tree's branching pattern it turns out scientists can gather clues about how it functions--for example how much carbon dioxide it exchanges with the atmosphere
or how much water transpires through its leaves--regardless of the tree's shape or species. The researchers'results published in the August issue of the scientific journal Ecology Letters have important implications for models used by scientists to assess how trees influence ecosystems across the globe.
Studies like this enable scientists to refine models used to assess and predict functions that cannot be measured directly for an entire forest for example how much carbon dioxide
and how much water the trees lose through evaporation. According to the authors their study is the first empirical test of a theory UA ecology professor Brian Enquist helped develop in 1998.
That theory holds that a tree's branching structure--specifically the width and length of its branches--predicts how much carbon
and water a tree exchanges with the environment in relation to its overall size independently of the species. This theory can be used to scale the size of plants to their function such as amount of photosynthesis water loss
and wanted to know how much carbon this forest puts out our study supports the idea that you might only have to look at the properties of a few trees representing the
All of the tree species we studied have very similar branching patterns regardless of their difference in appearance she said.
For example even though a piã on pine tree looks very different from a maple tree there are similar general ecological biological and physical principles that have resulted in a similar branching architecture across those species over the course of evolution.
Bentley and her team tested this prediction in five different species of trees: maple oak balsa Ponderosa pine and piã on pine.
They found the theory to be correct in that it allows for predictions about a tree's function depending on its size
and also in that the theory's principles apply across species despite their differences in appearance. There is a relationship between the size
Take a pine tree for example: It has the general shape of a cone while an oak tree looks like more like an inverted cone.
When you think about the many different shapes of trees I think it's pretty amazing that you get this correlation between such different looking trees.
For their study the researchers harvested a total of nine specimens from forest areas set aside for research purposes.
A team of undergraduate and graduate student researchers dissected the trees down to the last twig counting the number of branches the number of branching points or nodes and measuring the length and diameter of each branch.
If you imagine collapsing all of a tree's outermost branches into one cylinder that cylinder would be the size of the trunk Bentley said.
At the same time the experiments revealed that actual tree branching patterns are varied more and complex than predicted by the theory.
but trees don't look like that said Bentley who currently is working in Peru as part of her research through a postdoctoral fellowship the University of Oxford.
If you look at two trees that are the same height and belong to the same species you'll see more variability:
#Chronic harvesting threatens tropical treechronic harvesting of a tropical tree that many local communities in Western Africa depend on can alter the tree's reproduction
and seed yields over the tree's lifetime according to a new study. The study which appears today in the Journal of Ecology is the first of its kind to use
In this case the tree Khaya senegalensis commonly known as African mahogany is found in many habitats in Western Africa from forests to savanna woodland
The tree is harvested heavily for its leaves to feed cattle and for its bark which is used medicinally to treat many ailments from stomachaches to reducing malaria fevers.
Specifically analyzing harvesting effects on the tree in both dry and moist regions in Benin the study found that plant harvesting affects life history in different ways depending on the climatic conditions.
In the moist region chronic harvest delayed reproduction and the trees lived longer whereas in the dry region chronic harvesting hastened reproduction
and shortened the tree's life span. For indigenous people who are harvesting these plants knowing how long a particular species is going to persist
Say you wanted to know how an orange tree evolved but you could only compare it to an elm or oak.
You'd have greater insight into how an orange tree evolved if you could compare it to much more closely related plants like grapefruit and lemons
which could give insight into how each came from an ancestral citrus plant. In this study instead of comparing leaf and fruit shapes the team looked at gene regulation in mice that had diverged only recently from one another.
The Arctic ocean did not have ice in the summer and nearby land was warm enough to support alligators and palm trees.
Growers pay royalties on trees purchased acreage planted and fruit produced and the income is used to market the new varieties and support Cornell's apple-breeding program.
The first trees were planted in farmers'orchards in 2011 and now 400 acres are growing across the state.
According to NYAG the still-young trees will produce a limited crop this year but intrepid consumers can search out Snapdragon and Rubyfrost at select NYAG farm stands across the state.
#Could planting trees in the desert mitigate climate change? As the world starts feeling the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide
The technique dubbed carbon farming consists in planting trees in arid regions on a large scale to capture CO2.
This small tree is very resistant to aridity so it can be planted in hot and dry land in soil unsuitable for food production.
Further after a few years the plants would produce bioenergy (in the form of tree trimmings) to support the power production required for the desalination and irrigation systems.
They are one of the big elements of ecosystems like birds and trees. They are major movers of stuff.
and health that they could be considered in legal disputes--as is white pine nut availability now--about
When wolves were removed from Yellowstone early in the 1900s increased browsing by elk herds caused the demise of young aspen
and willow trees--a favorite food--along with many berry-producing shrubs and tall herbaceous plants. The recovery of those trees and other food sources since the re-introduction of wolves in the 1990s has had a profound impact on the Yellowstone ecosystem researchers say
even though it's still in the very early stages. Studies like this also point to the need for an ecologically effective number of wolves said co-author Robert Beschta an OSU professor emeritus.
so they can survive as a species. In some situations we may wish to consider the numbers necessary to help control overbrowsing allow tree
and allow tree and shrub recovery researchers said this improves the diet and health of grizzly bears.
Yellowstone has a wide variety of nutritious berries--serviceberry chokecherry buffaloberry twinberry huckleberry and others--that are highly palatable to bears.
Increases in berry production in Yellowstone may also provide a buffer against other ecosystem shifts the researchers noted--whitebark pine nut production a favored bear food may be facing pressure from climate change.
#Borneos orangutans are coming down from the trees; Behavior may show adaptation to habitat changeorangutans might be the king of the swingers
The research published in the American Journal of Primatology found that it is common for orangutans to come down from the trees to forage
and succeeded in capturing the first evidence of orangutans regularly coming down from the trees.
The reason orangutans come down from the trees remains a mystery. However while the absence of large predators may make it safer to walk on the forest floor a more pressing influence is the rapid and unprecedented loss of Borneo's orangutan habitat.
which allow them to consume more tree bark and less fruit but they are still dependent on natural forests for their long term survival.
#Borneos orangutans are coming down from the trees; Behavior may show adaptation to habitat changeorangutans might be the king of the swingers
The research published in the American Journal of Primatology found that it is common for orangutans to come down from the trees to forage
and succeeded in capturing the first evidence of orangutans regularly coming down from the trees.
The reason orangutans come down from the trees remains a mystery. However while the absence of large predators may make it safer to walk on the forest floor a more pressing influence is the rapid and unprecedented loss of Borneo's orangutan habitat.
which allow them to consume more tree bark and less fruit but they are still dependent on natural forests for their long term survival.
#Traditional forest management reduces fungal diversityin the beech groves of Navarre a team from the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country has analysed the influence exerted by forestry management on the fungi populations that decompose wood.
because fallen branches and trees tend to be cleared away. This wood if available ought to be decomposing as it is the habitat of many living beings like lignicolous fungi.
wood in various beech groves in Navarre. The main conclusion of the study is that forestry
The work of the UPV/EHU researchers has focussed on the traditional exploitation of various beech groves
Writing in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry researchers demonstrate the contamination of Pacific Tree Fogs in remote mountain areas including national parks;
The team collected frogs as well as water and sediment samples from seven ponds ranging from Lassen volcanic national park at the northern most point of Central Valley to the Giant sequoia National monument in the valley's southern extent.
explaining how for instance a young Lombardy poplar sends its branches up close to the vertical while an oak sapling's spread is much flatter.
Dr Stefan Kepinski senior lecturer in the University of Leeds'Faculty of Biological sciences and lead author of a paper in the journal Current Biology that gets to the bottom of the mystery said:
I was struck by the fact that the way we recognise tree and other plant species from a distance is informed largely by the angle at which their branches grow.
Kepinski expects the same mechanism to be observed in larger plants and young tree seedlings. In older trees the mechanisms driving gravity sensitive growth in woody tissues are different to those in non-woody plants.
Nevertheless Kepinski says the same general principles may apply. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Leeds. Note:
#Full genome map of oil palm indicates way to raise yields and protect rainforest: Single gene identified
whose regulation controls oil palm yielda multinational team of scientists has identified a single gene called Shell that regulates yield of the oil palm tree.
The fruit and seeds of the oil palm are the source of nearly one-half of the supply of edible vegetable oil worldwide
The discovery the product of a multiyear effort to provide a high-quality full genome map of the oil palm plant
and thus should lessen pressures to expand the land area devoted to oil palm notably onto endangered rainforest land--a major concern for the environment
Mutations in Shell explain the single most important economic trait of the oil palm: how the thickness of its shell correlates to fruit size
There are two species of oil palm African (Elaeis guineensis) and South american (Elaeis oleifera. Together they account for 45 percent of the edible vegetable oil worldwide.
The Shell gene is responsible for the oil palm's three known shell forms: dura (thick; pisifera (shell-less;
and tenera (thin) a hybrid of dura and pisifera palms. Tenera palms contain one mutant and one normal version or allele of Shell an optimum combination that results in 30%more oil per land area than dura palms.
How the discovery will affect plantation management and land usethe discovery of the Shell gene and its two naturally occurring mutations highlight new molecular strategies to identify seeds
or plantlets that will become high-yielding palms before they are introduced into plantations. Seed producers can now use the genetic marker for the Shell gene to distinguish the three fruit forms in the nursery long before they are field-planted.
whether an oil palm plantlet is a high-yielding palm Even with selective breeding 10 to 15 percent of plants are the low-yielding dura form due to uncontrollable wind and insect pollination particularly in plantations
and help stabilize the acreage devoted to oil palm plantations providing an opportunity for the conservation of rainforest reserves Martienssen explains.
To meet increased demand for palm oil the government converted colonial rubber and cocoa plantations to oil palm plantations.
and South american oil palm species. One of the newly published maps is the 1. 8 gigabase sequence of the E. guineensis African oil palm.
and other transcriptional regulators highly expressed in the oil-rich palm fruit. The researchers also created a draft sequence of the South american oil palm E. oleifera.
Both palm species are in the Arecaceae family of flowering plants which fossil evidence dates to the Cretaceous period an estimated 140 to 200 million years ago.
The investigators'comparison of the two maps enabled them to estimate that the oil palm species diverged at the old world-new world split.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
In particular mammals such as forest elephants gorillas forest antelopes and others play a major role in seed dispersal for most tree species;
and replaced by single-species plantations of oil palm rubber trees and crops for biofuels. The authors warn that such plantations greatly reduce areas available for seed dispersing wildlife.
and diverse ecosystems (ranging from grasslands and mangroves to shrublands and dense forests). As a result Panama is an ideal laboratory to develop
The new findings add to the evidence that relatively frequent and powerful fires are converting the conifer-rich boreal forests of Alaska into deciduous woodlands.
Deciduous trees which shed their leaves in autumn are more resistant to burning than the black spruce and white spruce that once dominated the Yukon Flats.
Global temperatures and tree species in the Yukon Flats were similar during the MCA to conditions today.
The researchers found that the composition of tree species in the Yukon Flats gradually shifted during the MCA--from forests dominated by coniferous trees to woodlands populated by relatively fire-resistant deciduous trees.
The same kind of change in tree species is occurring today Kelly said. Much of his study area has burned in the last decade with young deciduous trees now growing where black spruce once stood.
Current wildfire activity in the study area however has surpassed already the limit seen during the MCA Kelly said.
because so much spruce has burned recently--it's already different than the vast majority of boreal forests Hu said.
A more strategic approach to managing trees across the continent could have a positive impact on the changing climate researchers say.
A pioneering study of African savannas by the University of Edinburgh has revealed deforestation in south-central Africa driven by rising populations in the aftermath of war and increasing demand for trees for agriculture and fuel.
Loss of trees could impact on climate change as forests store carbon in their stems
--while most forests and woodlands in the south are losing tree cover many north of the equator are gaining trees.
Increase in forest cover north of the Congo basin might have been caused by migration to cities resulting in fewer fires and more hunting of large mammals reducing tree destruction.
Researchers analysed studies of tree cover in African savannas and combined this with a 25 year record from satellite data.
and degradation due to timber and oil palm industries but the rates and patterns of change have remained poorly measured by conventional field or satellite approaches.
or cleared for timber or oil palm production. Rainforests that previously contained lots of big old trees which store carbon and support a diverse ecosystem are being replaced with oil palm or timber plantations or hollowed out by logging.
Only 8%and 3%of land area in Sabah and Sarawak respectively was covered by intact forests in designated protected areas.
The new species was collected in a narrow river valley dominated by mountain sainfoin (Onobrychis cornuta) wild almond (Prunus amygdalus) scoparia) and downy brome (Bromus tectorum.
In terms of invasive forest insects tree species diversity works against Northeastern forests. The Northeast has an abundance of diverse hardwood tree species
and 65 percent of the insect and pathogen invaders included in this study colonize hardwood tree species said Liebhold a research entomologist with the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station.
Had these nonnative insects disembarked in a forest that is predominately pine for example most wouldn't have survived to become the damaging nonnative forest pests that they are today.
There are plenty of highly-damaging invasive species in Western United states forests such as sudden oak death and white pine blister rust according to Frankel a plant pathologist with the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station.
and filling in uncharted branches in the bacterial and archaeal tree of life. In an international collaboration led by the U s. Department of energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) the most recent findings from exploring microbial dark matter were published online July 14 2013 in the journal Nature.
and identify 201 distinct genomes which then could be aligned to 28 major previously uncharted branches of the tree of life.
Our single-cell genomes gave us a glimpse into the evolutionary relationships between uncultivated organisms--insights that extend beyond the single locus resolution of the 16s rrna tree
For almost 20 years now we have been astonished by how little there is known about massive regions of the tree of life.
and these would have to be selected based on being members of underrepresented branches on the tree.
#Trees use water more efficiently as atmospheric carbon dioxide risesspurred by increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide forests over the last two decades have become dramatically more efficient in how they use water a Harvard study has found.
#Huge iceberg breaks away from the Pine Island glacier in the Antarcticon July 8 2013 a huge area of the ice shelf broke away from the Pine Island glacier the longest
Using the images we have been able to follow how the larger crack on the Pine Island glacier extended initially to a length of 28 kilometres.
However the Pine Island glacier which flows from the Hudson mountains to the Amundsen Sea was the fastest flowing glacier in the Western Antarctic with a flow speed of around 4 kilometres per year.
For the Western Antarctic ice shelf an even faster flow of the Pine Island glacier would presumably have serious consequences.
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